Monday, November 29, 2010

" A hysterical mother looked on as her 15-year-old son was aggressively bundled to the ground. He was eventually released on police bail on suspicion of assault police, presumably for the damage done to police boots and batons inflicted by his head during the arrest..."

Saturday, November 27, 2010

I've always thought preparing for a trip with a bag of random useful items would be cool, someones beat me to it though with a mildly amusing list of items for a bag of trickshttp://www.erowid.org/columns/teafaerie/2010/11/04/spiritual-emergence-kit/

spilled coffee on dirty jeans cum and Clementine citrus smelling hands and feet covered in the filth of yesterday brains juiced and concentrated on the loss of a few too many times instances of constant misery far and distant expanses of sad immeasurable beauty the terror of sharp mountains ominous cloud people’s phallic castles I would like to visit an emptier world a bigger forest your deeper emotiona real person who understands without speaking what I mean about this ugly reeking city someone who wouldn’t trade true life and freedom for the comfort of feeding on civilizations dieing hope if love is a thing and life is vibrations I’d let them ring like a brass bell on the open oceanlike a crack of thunder a gunshot over the bow and under the island I call home to roam and plunder the mountains of their fruit and game would anybody share a dream with me? could I show you inner sweet blood? two reflections of the voidness searching for blisscan I tell you anyonewhat I strive to die for?what I’d love to live like? taking you on a long hike up my desolate spinal steps would you let me explore where many men have gone before?cyclic whore mother of earthancient songs know not the worthiness ofwrong and right eternal life and enlightenment are not afraid of loneliness and I am aware of only one place I’d rather be alone and its not here on the porch torching up a fat one but somewhere nearer to you blacknessblue sky sea infinite majesty beyond me to believe in seeing with closed eyes the telling darkness and dank smell of the rainy season

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

A large article on ibogaine's use in addiction treatment is making the rounds in alternative weekly papers:Clare Wilkins, the vivacious 40-year-old director of Pangea Biomedics, pops the lid off the blender to check the consistency of the concoction Price craves: peanut butter, soy milk, agave syrup, hemp protein powder and a few scoops of chocolate-flavored Green SuperFood.Oh, and a half-teaspoon of root bark from the tabernanthe iboga plant.

Taken in sufficient quantity, the substance triggers a psychedelic experience that users say is more intense than LSD or psilocybin mushrooms. Practitioners of the Bwiti religion in the West African nation of Gabon use iboga root bark as a sacrament to induce visions in tribal ceremonies, similar to the way natives of South and Central America use ayahuasca and peyote. Wilkins is one of a few dozen therapists worldwide who specialize in the use of iboga (more specifically, a potent extract called ibogaine) to treat drug addiction.

She pours the thick liquid into a Mason jar but agrees to hand it over to Price only on the condition heíll stay awake and out of bed and interact with his fellow residents and the staff. Price grudgingly agrees and takes a seat at the dining-room table. Sunlight pours in through a sliding-glass door that opens to a terrace with a sweeping view of the Pacific Ocean and the San Diego skyline in the distance.

"Ron, I remember when you called me [three weeks ago]; you were crying on the phone. You were so devastated you couldnít leave the house," Wilkins says gently. "When you use, you end up alone in a bathroom or something. You need a community. As weird and misfits as we are, we need this sense of community. You need to learn to deal with being in your body each day instead of relying on the fucking ibogaine."

Ibogaine and iboga root bark are illegal in the United States but unregulated in many countries, including Canada and Mexico. Wilkins, though, is hardly alone in her belief that iboga-based substances can be used as a legitimate treatment for drug addiction. Researchers at respected institutions have conducted experiments and ended up with hard evidence that the compound works--as long as you donít mind the mindfuck.

oh craving, goddess in the godless blackness of the undergroundmy loving stench never mentioned above never spoken a word or broken the silence with this love if it is anything like that to fuck a hole in the ground without making a sound in the hard cement chamber beneath all the asian hipsters with iphones and grandmas driving this painful machine of desperation with the heater on higgghhhif ever an enemy of mine than that sick hopeless feeling to make an innocent boy rape himself in his head and other places to breathe in and inject in different orifices oh open lips and warm skinned wet within, sinful sisters and druggie ho’s everywhere we are surrounded by pretty faces and brains compounded with raining alkaloid tears EXTRACT! EXTRACTiontake me away and then add somehot solvent evaporate my fears for that crystal clear kind of mind I guess just take care of yourself when your out using some dude for his stash and car whatever parking lot you let him grope you in the dark while he takes a hit a shot a chance all for the lost romance of a thought forgotten

Monday, November 22, 2010

Huddled around flickering candles and eating food before it could spoil, longtime neighbors introduced themselves, discovering similarities and answering the question of the day: “Where were you when the lights went out?” They were asking this, of course, during the big blackout of August 14, 2003, but I’m getting a little ahead of myself. This story begins in the stars…read more http://news.infoshop.org/article.php?story=20101121025432403

Sunday, November 21, 2010

Friday, November 19, 2010

On June 11, 1981 a Dutch student named Renée Hartevelt arrived at an apartment at 10 Rue Erlanger She had been invited there by a classmate at the Sorbonne Academy in Paris, France. The classmate was 32 year-old Issei Sagawa. Not long after she arrived he shot her in the neck with a rifle while she sat at a desk with her back to him. Afterward he had sex with her corpse and, over the course of the next two days, proceeded to eat much of her body.

He was held without trial for two years after his arrest until he was declared legally insane (and thereby unfit to stand trial) by French psychiatrists and confined to a mental institution. While there, his account of the crime was published in japan as In The Fog. His new celebrity was no doubt a determining factor in the French authorities’ decision to extradite him to Japan. There, he was examined once again by psychiatrists who declared him sane but “evil”. Due to a technicality, in which Japanese authorities cited the lack of certain papers supposed to have been provided by French courts, they found it impossible to hold him and on August 12, 1986 Sagawa checked himself out of the mental institution.

For the past 24 years he’s been living in Tokyo. He is still a minor celebrity and has written over twenty books, mostly having to do with his own crimes or commentary on the crimes of others. He’s also been in a few exploitative films and sells his paintings, most of which are portraits of women. This is where VBS meets him then, seemingly running out the tail end of his notoriety and not particularly hopeful for the future. Vice does a commendable job in staying completely out of the way and letting the man speak for himself. Sagawa, for his part, has spent most of his life reflecting on one event and, as is usually the case with interviews of murderers, he has no real answers to provide.

Throughout, Sagawa speaks at length about his disgust both with himself and the public whose interest in the macabre has allowed him to flourish for so long. The last few minutes are of him describing how he would like to die in excruciating pain. It would have been easy for VBS to leave us with that sentiment; the image of the fiend undone by the horrors he has committed. Instead, the last image we see is of Renée Hartevelt, from whom everything was taken and whose death has made everything in Issei Sagawa’s life possible.

I’m sick of this diseasemissing a place I’ve never been toin love with someone I’ve never metI am hungry for what I’ve never tasted drunk on spilled beer but never wasted never more then a drop or so poorer in the begging bowl it burns we all pass around it in turn we harmonize and sing the songs we have never heard and love the god that was never therebut if I look around and see her everywhere, these thoughts so illusive running wild away, too free for this oppressive lifestyleI was gone for a while in a dessert with a melting sun and a setting race of humanoid faces projected on to hologram tee pees like a prehistoric silent film an awkward conscious haunts me don’t stop us from trying though a being wanting to be impossibly alive my body stripped of its essence and skinned of hide for a new drumhow beautifully beat eternally the flesh of innocent self-sacrifice should suffice to please the entities and selves that cure me of this disease

The new conservative Dutch government wants to force the country's marijuana cafes to become "members only" clubs, a move that would effectively block foreigners from buying the drug.If the idea ever becomes reality -- it would be legally complicated and politically divisive -- it would be the latest of the country's liberal policies to be scrapped or curtailed as the Dutch rethink the limits of their famed tolerance.

While marijuana is technically illegal in the Netherlands, it has been sold openly in designated cafes for decades, and police make no arrests for possession of small amounts.

Justice Minister Ivo Opstelten said that in the future, only residents of Dutch cities will be allowed to purchase cannabis. "Not tourists. We don't like that," he said on state television in remarks broadcast Wednesday.

"A study published last week in Brussels warns that the European Union (EU) could worsen climate change if it continues with its policy of increasing agrofuel production, causing serious social and environmental problems in the countries where the crops are produced..."read more http://www.radiomundoreal.fm/Agrofuels-accelerate-global?lang=e

waking early from a dream of you kissing him goodbye and feeling shitty when I come to thisworld of opened eyes and closed minded people where there are too many moments spent thinking of you a waste a war fought every morning born desperate for a taste of the unseenthe unfelt that I am feeling now I was so briefly filled and emptied withthe low fluid of loveless isolation now stuck in it these shallow thoughts and hollow dreams where time is like jello shots and my mind is green with the mildew of untold moldy growths a colony of lonely depression sitting for a session with the old broken bong this morning dreams came again like a song stuck in my headthis time somehow we were together againagainst all logic and reason in my conscious bodymy subterranean dreamstate ego still can’t let go and there I was in utter bliss to hold you again I told you I loved you more then a friend but I woke up and it ended I knew I shouldn’t feel that way life is too short to be lived tortured by illusions but too long to lie alone all night and dream of things unreachable out of touch with my own voice and your hands I must learn the unteachable command to control my soulit wont take many drugs to fill the hole you left it was always there anyways it grows slightly bigger when I live with but without you everydayevery morning mourning the eventual rise and fall of the sunevery second waiting for what will never come from anything but the end of a gunfreedom bliss and something like thisan end to clouds of loneliness and the flashing painawaiting death a rolling thunder pummels mycerebral tunnel channeling the coming storminto the songs of tiny droplets red

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Police personnel from France, Croatia and Poland had joined in the biggest security operation ever mounted against protestors against the a train carrying nuclear waste to a depot in an isolated part of Lower Saxony’s countryside. Helicopters, water canons and police vehicles, including an armoured surveillance truck, accompanied an endless column of anti-riot police mounted on horses and also marching down the railway tracks into the dense woods. Tens of thousands of anti riot police clattered along the tracks, their helmets and visors gleaming in the morning sun, and wearing body armour, leg guards and carrying batons.

read more http://alethonews.wordpress.com/2010/11/09/german-people-in-unprecedented-rebellion-against-government/

Monday, November 15, 2010

In the era of Total Information Awareness, representative democracy as we practice it in the U.S. is looking more and more quaint and out-dated. The Obama administration continues the Bush post-911 paranoia with increased surveillance of “we the people”. While the government's ability to collect data on it's people (more than 99.9999% of whom have done absolutely nothing wrong) increases so does the paranoia, creating a feedback loop of diminishing civil rights.As rights-infringing technology has advanced exponentially, the technology of democracy has not. Our leaders make decisions very much in the same manner that they have for the last two centuries. They travel to a central location and meet in committees. They pound the needs and desires of their campaign contributors into a slurry of semantic abstractions. They ad heaping spoonfuls of pork-fat earmarks, appropriations and amendments, obfuscate the intent with archaic legalese, then force-feed the resulting pablum to the public while claiming victory for their party. With any luck, these franken-laws, stitched together from the putrid flesh of dead ideas, rise to zombie-life in the course of several months- but more likely several years.Despite information technology's rapid advancements, those advancements have yet to be applied to the decision making process but only to the command and control structure. Hyper-specialization within the bureaucratic class has lead to the establishment of an American Apparatchik. These political functionaries desperately fight to preserve their territorial power through the maintenance of the status quo. The resulting Kafka-esque system virtually guarantees that laws are outdated before they are passed, assuring – nothing.Virtually every “hot-button” issue in the American political discourse right now is an example of lawmaking that is trailing far behind the public. By dropping the anchor of policy, politicians are holding the ship of state in position, trying to hold back the flow of society- but they cannot control the flow- our culture has proceeded far downstream, leaving government behind.Examples are endless:“Don't Ask, Don't Tell” - polling among troops show clearly that this is a non-issue. Most people under 30 have grown up in the post “metro-sexual” era and simply don't give a shit.Gay Marriage- Why is marriage defined in law? By replacing all “marriage” laws with civil contracts, the rights of all people are protected, leaving the marryin' to the preachers.Cap and Trade Legislation – In the years between Kyoto Protocol (1997) and it's implementation (2005), the renewable energy sector grew exponentially. The push to add a dubious financial market based on carbon trading has gained more detractors to clean energy technology than it has fans.Because of this growing disconnect between the people and their rulers, more and more citizens are choosing to practice “selective obedience”. By simply choosing not to observe certain laws, boundaries are stretched and eventually they become irrelevant. For example, many (if not most) young people in America today violate copyright laws. They download music and movies from pirate sites overseas, and most never experience any legal issues. It has become the norm. Persecuting a few poorly chosen individuals to make “examples” out of them simply makes the entertainment industry and their friends in the new Apparatchik look that much more foolish. Drug prohibition, clearly a long-standing example of the total failure of policy-making, serves only to profit the prison-industrial complex, while the vast majority of casual users continue to enjoy altering their realities un-hindered by big-brother. Speed limits? They only matter if you get caught. Taxes on barter, trade or cash payments? Yeah right.The governments response to all of this is to increase the authority of agencies under the umbrella of the Department of Homeland Security. They are using information technology against citizens in order to make up for the governments inability to deal with it's own obsolescence. By collecting information on EVERYONE, they are working under the premise that the larger the haystack, the more needles they will find. But as Cory Doctorow points out in his 2008 article for the Guardian:“The problem of sifting through vast amounts of data was highlighted by the US 9/11 Commission, which concluded that the American intelligence community knew in advance that the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon were in the offing, they just didn't know they knew it. The pieces were all there for anyone who knew to look for them, needles buried in a haystack of irrelevancies. “Today, we are all potential needles. Your anomalous behavior makes you look more and more like a needle. Your donation to a charity, your phone calls to an overseas relative, your purchase of allergy medication, all can potentially add to a profile that makes you look more like a needle. Your commuting habits- tracked by your transit pass. Your regular meals at the neighborhood middle eastern restaurant- noted on your credit card record . Increasingly, any variation from the mainstream is suspect behavior.As we know from our countries history of locking up non-violent “offenders”, criminalization of anomalous behavior creates criminals. Persecution leads to aberrant behavior. What we need is not to be increasingly surveilled to make sure that we are not violating norms, but to be given the freedom to rise to humanities highest potential. When given the opportunity, people generally choose to work for the common good. Is it any wonder that a recent study shows that people who download pirated music are also 10 times more likely to buy music? This knowledge has lead savvy music business executives to rethink the way they deliver their product and to profit from it, rather than suing their customers. Civil unions and gay marriages, as it turns out, are good for the economies of the states who recognize those unions as a civil right. Decriminalization of marijuana and the use of marijuana as medicine is good for everyone except large drug companies and the prison industry. Opening up the monopolistic electric utility industry to innovation by solar and wind development will bring about emissions reductions faster than a byzantine financial trading scheme.In the world of computing, operating systems are continually improved. Problems are located, patches written and updates issued. Occasionally, a completely new version of the OS is warranted. In the “open-source” software community, that source code is open to anyone who wishes to work on it, and their improvements can be freely adopted to the benefit of all. This dynamic system assures that the system is constantly improving, and that everyone has the freedom to customize the system, adding new ideas, taking away things that don't work.In government, fixes take the form of new patches, in a never-ending additive process. Nothing is ever subtracted, no new source code is ever written. Innovators do not go into government, because there is no room for innovation in government. By forcing people into “the middle”, our government is suppressing individuality and grinding off the rough edges of society where innovation lives. They have institutionalized mediocrity, stifling any hope of advancing as a civilization. The fallacy of “the middle ground” is dragging us down. The term “moderate” increasingly refers not to people who carefully consider both sides of an issue, but rather to people without conviction or imagination. The “middle ground” is not where we should choose to live- it should be where we meet to set a few ground rules that allow us all to live and work unhindered as individuals.Until we agree to addressing the issue of our out-dated government source code, there is no hope for cultural evolution in this nation. It is up to individuals to adopt “selective obedience”, to hack the system and accept the mantle of peaceful dissidence.

“People who live in the post-totalitarian system know only too well that the question of whether one or several political parties are in power, and how these parties define and label themselves, is of far less importance than the question of whether or not it is possible to live like a human being.”-Vaclav HavelPOSTED BY FERALTECH AT 10:36 AM http://obsoletemag.blogspot.com/2010/11/disobey.html

Sunday, November 14, 2010

i seem to tumble in the windi wait for it to beginwhen i look at youi ain't too proud to sayi once loved a girl this way

i bring trouble on my lonesome selfi see danger in each offered helptimes are hardthe money just won't come throughi would be alone if not for you

they brought my in on a flatcardown from old hong kongtried to tell me what i was doingwas absolutely wrongtried to make me overinto a man of steelbut i knew i would have to kneel

from the plains of albertawith its wheat so wild and strongi rolled over the Northlandstill i came to saskatchewanfrom a hardback in my satcheli read the words quite clearhurry home to your loved ones nowwintertime is near

i seem to tumble in the windi wait for it to beginwhen i look at youi ain't too proud to sayi once loved a girl this way

I don’t ask whywhen I prepare for the worsethe downfalls always better if I’m expecting disasteruntil someday we blow upthe explosion is bigger than the deviceI couldn’t escape and the water came in at nightwe drowned in our sleep knowingonly assumptions and liesall the unturned pages that don’t matter when you diewhen consciousness deterioratesthe body is finite and deathoh voidan extension of life’s unbounded light!let me lay in restas a body in the snowor a being in a glowing cloudsome vapor organism that a wood smoke spirit could live in, trulyour heaven is divided by the doors of are perceptual limitationsthe very core of our conscious is capable of unconstrained creationbut our relations with each other die toolosing our love of the land that bore us shelter, food and all aspects of us as we arethis young fucking generation would rather have smart-phones and carsbut what I seelies and illusiona mass of army ants at a drunken picnic of the godsis it really happening to me?incestuous infestations of breadsticks, buildings and filing cabinets falling onto the pavement from above the flooding streets and all you and I can think iswhat will we eat when the industry destroys natures cornucopiaand when we destroy the industrial system in it selfor on its ownthese things have a shelf life you knowand the date on aunt civ's soup is past duegrandma please avoid future greed poisoned stewthrow away the few that rule the manysabotage commercialism till the mountains are plenty withforest to foragesing till the fish come backof a place where there once lived a peaceful peopleand love without thought or hesitationwhen they whisper in the tunnels“we are transcendental warriors against all nations”

Monday, November 8, 2010

Could a guerilla army organized of hunters, farmers and fishermen liberate a forested hawaiian island and create an autonomous zone based on traditional hawaiian culture and ahapua'a system, as well as decentralization, mutual aid and non-authoritarian philosophy?if not i'm moving to chiapas

This sign reads, in Spanish: Top sign: "You are in Zapatista rebel territory. Here the people command and the government obeys." Bottom sign: "North Zone. Council of Good Government. Trafficking in weapons, planting of drugs, drug use, alcoholic beverages, and illegal sales of wood are strictly prohibited. No to the destruction of nature." Federal Highway 307, Chiapas.

Sunday, November 7, 2010

shit! all of them in the animals belly just red gummy bears in orchards of apple pie and ice dreams crack dens broken seams in jizzed on jeans other holes in places unseen pictures in our high fucking headsand in dead peoples embalming elixirs the whole social nature of a creature based inviolent pornography still isn’t good enough for themand is still kind of weird for me when my eyes are closed and I’m touching you under the covers of your eyelids keeping my cornea warm tooits images will never forget us and a lonely mind wont let me forget you I know it’s a cheap rhyme it’s a cliché tune and square shaped rhythm that I’m giving but its desperately true and annoyingly familiar like all those stoner jokes they can’t even get me now that I’m choking on smoky laughter after the fact of living like this is realized a disaster come on then offcome down it all happens faster then my eyes will seea momentary movie about our fucking fantastic misery a quick photograph of the future its in black and white like now but mostly black voided distortion and druggy wishing scheming memes and grow op plans we’ll still never grow up cold and alone but I’ll cry from above my homedark children of ash and bloodshot eyes,do you understand me?

“In those days I lived with a woman, not my lawful wedded wife, but a mistress whom I had chosen for no special reason but that my restless passions had alighted on her.”

Dorothy Day in Love

New letters reveal the frank sexuality of a possible saint.

Robert Ellsberg

Generally speaking, there is not much to say about the sex lives of the saints. Yes, they were great lovers of God, and if Bernini’s famous sculpture “St. Teresa in Ecstasy” is any evidence, one can appreciate that such love was not merely platonic. But what about passionate, erotic, physical love between flesh-and-blood humans? Even if one looked carefully at the lives of the virgin martyrs and the celibate monks, priests and religious who dominate the religious calendar, it would be hard to fill a page on the subject of sex and holiness.

There is St. Augustine, who writes about his youthful search for “some object for my love.” In different forms and persons, including his mistress of many years, he evidently found it. But in every case Augustine wants to show how the “clear waters” of love were invariably spoiled by the “black rivers of lust.” Augustine describes his relationship with his unnamed mistress, the mother of his son, in these unflattering terms: “In those days I lived with a woman, not my lawful wedded wife, but a mistress whom I had chosen for no special reason but that my restless passions had alighted on her.”

Dorothy and Forster

It is striking to compare Augustine’s treatment with a similar passage in The Long Loneliness, the memoir of Dorothy Day, the American-born co-founder of the Catholic Worker. There she introduces the story of her love affair with Forster Batterham, and the role he played in hastening her spiritual journey: “The man I loved, with whom I entered into a common-law marriage, was an anarchist, an Englishman by descent, and a biologist.” They met at a party in Greenwich Village in the early 1920s and soon thereafter began to live together—as she put it, “in the fullest sense of the phrase”—in a house on Staten Island.

Among their bohemian set there was nothing scandalous about such a relationship. It was evidently Dorothy who liked to think of it as a “common-law marriage.” For Forster, who never masked his scorn for the “institution of the family,” their relationship was simply a “comradeship.” Nevertheless, she loved him “in every way.” As she wrote: “I loved him for all he knew and pitied him for all he didn’t know. I loved him for the odds and ends I had to fish out of his sweater pockets and for the sand and shells he brought in with his fishing. I loved his lean cold body as he got into bed smelling of the sea and I loved his integrity and stubborn pride.”

Wait a minute! Day is here describing, without any hint of Augustine’s obligatory shame or regret, her physical relationship with a man to whom she was not married. Needless to say, she was not yet a Catholic. Yet her point is to show how this lesson in love, this time of “natural happiness,” as she called it, awakened her thirst for an even greater happiness. She began to pray during her walks and started to attend Mass. This religious impulse was strengthened when she discovered she was pregnant—an event that inspired a sense of gratitude so large that only God could receive it. With that came the determination that she would have her child baptized, “come what may.”

As a dedicated anarchist, Forster would not be married by either church or state. And so to become a Catholic, Dorothy recognized, would mean separating from the man she loved. “It got to the point where it was the simple question of whether I chose God or man.” Ultimately, painfully, she chose God. In December 1927 she forced Forster to leave the house. That month she was received into the church.

The New Letters

So goes the familiar story recounted in her memoir. But it is not the whole story. In editing Day’s personal letters, All the Way to Heaven, I was astonished to read an extraordinary collection of letters to Forster dating from 1925, soon after their first meeting, until December 1932, the eve of her new life in the Catholic Worker.

The early letters certainly reflect the passionate love described in The Long Loneliness. In her first letter she writes: “I miss you so much. I was very cold last night. Not because there wasn’t enough covers but because I didn’t have you.” In the next, “I think of you much and dream of you every night and if my dreams could affect you over long distance, I am sure they would keep you awake.” Separated for some weeks, she writes Forster: “My desire for you is a painful rather than pleasurable emotion. It is a ravishing hunger which makes me want you more than anything in the world and makes me feel as though I could barely exist until I saw you again...I have never wanted you as much as I have ever since I left, from the first week on, although I’ve thought before that my desires were almost too strong to be borne.”

The letters skip over the time of Tamar’s birth and Dorothy’s conversion, but after her parting from Forster they resume with poignant intensity. Despite the implication in Dorothy’s memoir that her conversion had marked an end, once and for all, to their relationship, this was far from the case. In fact, the letters continue for another five years, as Dorothy pleaded, cajoled and prayed that Forster would give up his stubbornness and consent to marry her.

In vain, she assured him that he would be “involving [himself] in nothing” if he married her. “Religion would be obtruded on you in no way except that you would have to see me go to church once a week, and five times a year on various saints’ days. I would have nothing around the house to jar upon you—no pictures and books. I am really not obsessed as you think I am.”

At times she could not hide her frustration: “Do I have to be condemned to celibacy all my days, just because of your pig-headedness? Damn it, do I have to remind you that Tamar needs a father?” Her tone fluctuated between tenderness and bitter reproach: “I am not restrained when I am lying in your arms, am I? You know I am not a promiscuous creature in my love.... But it is all so damned hopeless that I do hope I fall in love again and marry since there seems to be no possibility for a happy outcome to our love for each other.”

By the fall of 1932 Dorothy was living in New York. In December she traveled to Washington, D.C., to cover the Hunger March of the Unemployed. There on the feast of the Immaculate Conception, she offered a prayer that God would show her some way to combine her Catholic faith and her commitment to social justice. Immediately afterward she would meet Peter Maurin, the French peasant philosopher who would inspire her to launch the Catholic Worker and whose ideas would dominate the rest of her life. Whether there was any relation between the opening of this new door and the decision finally to close the door on her hope of marrying Forster, Dorothy’s letter to him of Dec. 10 would be her last for many years.

After describing her strong commitment to the prohibition of sex outside of marriage, she writes: “The ache in my heart is intolerable at times, and sometimes for days I can feel your lips upon me, waking and sleeping. It is because I love you so much that I want you to marry me.” Nevertheless, she concluded: “It all is hopeless of course, tho [sic] it has often seemed to me a simple thing. Imaginatively I can understand your hatred and rebellion against my beliefs and I can’t blame you. I have really given up hope now, so I won’t try to persuade you anymore.”

But even this did not mark the end of their relationship. Over the years they remained connected through Tamar. There would be friendly notes, the exchange of gifts and visits in the hospital. In Dorothy’s final years Forster took to calling every day. He was present at her funeral in 1980, and later at a memorial Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

More Fully Human

So what, in the end, do these newly published letters reveal? They certainly confirm the deep, passionate love described in Dorothy’s memoir, thus underscoring the incredible sacrifice she endured for the sake of her faith. That sacrifice lay at the heart of her vocation; it was the foundation for a lifetime of courage, perseverance and dedication. It marked her deep sense of the heroic demands of faith. But in no sense did it represent a conflict in her mind between “merely” human love and “higher” religious aspirations. “I could not see that love between man and woman was incompatible with love of God,” she wrote. And if she had had her way, she would have embraced a happy family life with Forster and the many children she dreamed of.

Although, as Dorothy reported, some of her radical friends insinuated that her turn to God was because she was “tired of sex, satiated, disillusioned,” her true feelings were quite different. “It was because through a whole love, both physical and spiritual, I came to know God.”

If Dorothy Day is one day canonized, these letters will provide a fairly unusual resource. They serve to remind us, if that were necessary, that saints are fully human—perhaps, as Thomas Merton put it in Life and Holiness, more fully human: “This implies a greater capacity for concern, for suffering, for understanding, for sympathy, and also for humor, for joy, for appreciation for the good and beautiful things of life.”

Dorothy considered her love for Forster to be one of the primary encounters with grace in her life, one for which she never ceased to rejoice. That insight and that witness are among her many gifts.

Robert Ellsberg, publisher of Orbis Books, is editor of The Duty of Delight: The Diaries of Dorothy Day and the recently published collection of her letters, All the Way to Heaven, reviewed in America on Nov. 8.taken from infoshop.org by leaves from the fall

I love how the storms wind tells the trees to bless methey whisper drops from clouds of shade that rest meunder the trees leaves I’m meditating on mosquitoes their bites bring my mind to go backand relaxI move on to the underneath that cushioned wreath of ferns thank themthat centipedes concern medisturbingly crawling through the wet canopyI know that in dreams they cannot hurt me but our false gods so controlling we push along this death machine not knowing on Earththey fear hells heatyet we are the masters of this realityby the drum and the heart beat

As with any title I have ever made, the namesake for this blog was a carelessly ripped line from my list of poetry sketches and is totally meaningless and irrelevant for everything thats written here, however I'll put it up since I axed my facebook, which was its usual resting place...

he was spacing outlike into space, you know?far, far outin my own thoughtsI was creepinghe was kneeling by the creekwalking over this bridge, traila forest greenfiltered sunlight and hazy rainbowyou smell like fernsand I sweatand coffeehe tries not to be self-consciousbut so becomesunconsciousbabewe're in this moving coma togetherturn the TV offand let go of yougot to distance usdon’t get stuckin the muddy pit of youreye's hazel orbsabsorb my inner voicethe coyotes cries with the moonand our fences wont keep them outoff the lambsmy tasty youngboy by the pond fishingthat was so long agoits funny how bored echoesresonate so strong later onhere now I’d rather be therebackbut where I am is the best for merightam I fucking myself too mucham I, as they saythrowing my life awayto where is thatdeath we're all headedto life I am still leavingdreadingavoiding like an annoying old friend ormy creepy neighborno there’s no godor savior for the thought criminalsradical rebels and land fishbreathe in tanks of seawater manfor the sake of us allregurgitate your empty mealsyour empty life kills our dreamswhen we're told so often to“wake up”to get “realistic”I am realisticin a surrealist way I’m quite the practical dreamernot an “idealist”there is no ideal worldonly one less lonelyless hungry and more beautifulI strive but to decompose alive for your gardensrotting with grass cuttings and vegan feceswith my shitty poems fertilize soon toomy body for you Earth Mothergreat Gaia I present she the goddess of allcharcoal from the fireand leaves from the fall

Amazing list of substances found at recent Phish show bust.Judging from the smorgasbord of drugs confiscated over the weekend, Atlantic City Police could hang a sign on their evidence locker that reads:Phish Pharmacopeia.

The Grateful Dead-inspired jam band played Friday, Saturday and Sunday (Halloween) in "America's Playground," and authorities, including immigration/customs agents and members of the county prosecutor's office, collected everything from magic mushrooms and acid to the anesthetic ketamine and prescription pills.

They even seized Rice Krispies Treats with cannabis.

Enough to create an illustrated field guide to meds and mind-altering substances.

Arrested were 63 men and women from 15 states, plus one Philadelphia 15-year-old who allegedly resisted arrest after distributing nitrous oxide. Most of the accused were given summonses for possession and released. A detective "assaulted with nitrous oxide" while making two arrests was treated and released from a hospital, and a captain's hand was injured as he tried to subdue a male suspect, according to the police news release.

As it turns out the antiretroviral drugs marketed by multinational pharmaceutical companies as a treatment for HIV are actually highly addictive narcotics:Whoonga, as it's known, is a substance being smoked in poor township communities around Durban, and it's popping up in other parts of the country as well.Drug-taking is commonplace in the townships - what else do you do if you're unskilled, uneducated and unemployed, as so many are?

Backroom experimentation produces an ever-changing array of concoctions that offer a cheap and lethal high.

What makes whoonga different - a fine white powder, added to marijuana and smoked - is its composition.

With South Africa finally making inroads in the battle against HIV and Aids after years of denialism, this is a dreadful blow.

Whoonga is cheap, bought from a dealer for just 20 rand or $3 a hit. But 40 per cent of all South Africans survive on little more than $2 a day.

The average jobless whoonga user needs multiple hits to get through the day, so for many crime becomes the only way to secure a regular supply.

Worst of all, it means people in need of ARVs to save or prolong their lives are sometimes going without.

They're being mugged for their pills as they leave the clinic.

Whoonga is basically just smoked ARVs, most commonly Efavirenz (brand name Sustiva & Stocrin). Regardless of media hype about how it's consumed and any supposed additives, television news footage clearly shows a crushed tablet being smoked in a handrolled tobacco cigarette.

And of course Whoonga is surrounded by all the drug-war-retoric about the use and abuse of recreational substances. But what the media has yet to mention, if these drugs are so addictive and destructive, surely there must be a better treatment for HIV?!